“For when I trace back the years I have liv’d, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer’d Work Of Nature my life has been. If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it), I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them, but I cannot help their Unbelief; and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse.”

“The writer’s curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.”

“No book can be written till it wants to be written, till it shouts to be written, and raises up a persistent din in the writer’s head. And then, if you want peace, you just have to pull it out and freeze it in print. Nothing less would do.”

“A good writer is also an avid reader. A good reader is also a vivid dreamer. A good dreamer is also a good learner. And a good learner is definitely a good listener. A good listener is always looking to what the heart speaks. A spoken heart talks directly to a silent soul. And a silent soul is most of the time in pace with a peaceful thought. A peaceful thought is also a good writer…”

“…writing surrounds us: it’s not something we do just in school or on the job but something that is as familiar and everyday as a pair of worn sneakers or the air we breathe.”

“The highest privilege of being a writer is being able to say, ‘open your mind to me and I’ll take you to another world.”

“Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.”

“The other day, when I was deciding where to place a mountain range, how to make a river’s flow detour around underground stalactite caves, and what precise color to give the sky at sunset, I realized I was God… or an artist and a writer.”

“What I’ve learned about writing is that sometimes less is more, while often more is grander. And both are true.”

“Anak-anak muda jaman sekarang itu lucu dan agak susah dimengerti. Mereka cukup bersemangat membuat berbagai macam proposal untuk kegiatan organisasi yang mereka ikuti. Tapi proposal hidup yang berisi visi dan strateginya meraih mimpi, justru lupa mereka buat sendiri.”

“Nilai akhir dari proses pendidikan, sejatinya terrekapitulasi dari keberhasilannya menciptakan perubahan pada dirinya dan lingkungan. Itulah fungsi daripada pendidikan yang sesungguhnya.”

“The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author’s supervision swell gradually with the reader’s lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that – not very appetizing – food and thrive on it, sometimes for centuries.”

“Sometimes, when it’s going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell. Emma is lost on anything less than 120gsm.”

“If you live with dogs, you’ll never run out of things to write about.”

“An inspirational writer’s life is an open book that never shuts. Choose your words carefully.”